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News Notes: Worker Who Lost Pregnancy Bias Suit Ordered To Pay Employer’s Attorney’s Fees

A trial judge has turned the tables on a lawyer who failed to convince a jury that the law firm in which she was a partner had refused to accommodate her pregnancy. Finding that Shari Cohen Rosenman’s lawsuit was unreasonable, the court ordered her to pay $231,000 toward the attorney’s fees and costs of the […]

Terminated Employee Was Not a Whistleblower, Court Says

Is every employee who makes a formal complaint considered a “whistleblower”? The federal District Court says no. Mark Shulthies, a long time Amtrak employee working in California, sent an email to his supervisor complaining that the company’s decision to reorganize certain aspects of its service between the Bay Area and Bakersfield posed a “danger to […]

Corporate Giants Band Together to form New Health Transformation Alliance

Twenty of America’s largest corporations have joined together to improve the way healthcare benefits are purchased for employees in an effort to create better health care outcomes. The stated goal of the newly formed Health Transformation Alliance (HTA), according to a press release, is “to break with existing marketplace practices that are costly, wasteful, and […]

Employee Stock Options: Get Them Right

By Christopher Ferguson and Stephen Acker In 2010, Jen-Hsun Huang’s salary was $1. No, he’s not a fresh-faced intern. Rather, Huang is the CEO of Nvidia Inc., the graphics and mobile chipmaker with Intel-sized ambitions. In that context, $1 seems like a meager reward. You would imagine that out of the firm’s $844 million in […]

Appalling Reference Issue HR Pros Should Watch Out For

by Michael B. Leahy Recently, our colleagues in California brought a shady — and possibly criminal — Web-based reference service to our attention. What we saw shocked us. HR Guide to Employment Law: A practical compliance reference manual covering 14 topics, including hiring Every excuse in the book! CareerExcuse.com supplies fraudulent job references to employers […]

Financial Crisis Should Boost Work-Life Benefits

by Sarah McAdams The global economic crisis is stressing out employees everywhere. Almost half are worried they’re going to lose their jobs, nearly a third are working more hours and taking less time off, 48 percent said that stress makes it hard for them to perform well on the job, and 25 percent are actively […]

The Executive Pay Ratio: It’s Time to Act

The bigger the wheels, the more slowly they turn, and seldom will you find wheels bigger than those inside the U.S. government. The wheels within one particular agency, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), have been churning for no fewer than 5 years, trying to shape policy to address provisions of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall […]

Airline Fee Unbundling Challenges Travel Managers

The airline industry is helping to shift more of the cost of business travel away from the booking phase — the stage at which costs can be managed most easily — to the trip itself when expenses are incurred on the fly. This creates challenges for corporate travel managers — and the federal government, which […]

Mental Health Parity Changes Take Effect January 1, 2010

It’s time for employers to examine their health benefits to see if they’re in compliance with the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Act of 2008, which takes effect on January 1, 2010. The law applies to most employers with more than 50 employees. It requires covered employers that offer a health insurance plan with mental […]

Zero tolerance for stalking on company time

by Chuck Harrison A single incident of misconduct can still justify the termination of a unionized employee’s employment. So ruled a labor arbitrator in British Columbia recently. In Fortis Energy Inc., (February 16, 2015) the employee had engaged in an incident of stalking and intimidation of his wife’s supervisor. Compounding his offense, he did this […]